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Eugenics has influenced political, public health and social movements in Japan since the late 19th and early 20th century. Originally brought to Japan through the United States (like Charles Davenport and John Coulter), through Mendelian inheritance by way of German influences, and French Lamarckian eugenic written studies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eugenics as a science was hotly debated at the beginning of the 20th, in Jinsei-Der Mensch, the first eugenics journal in the Empire. As the Japanese sought to close ranks with the West, this practice was adopted wholesale, along with colonialism and its justifications.

The concept of pureblood as a criterion for the uniqueness of the Yamato people began circulating around 1880 in Japan, while eugenics in the sense of instrumental and selective procreation, clustered around two positions concerning blood, the pure blood (純血, junketsu) and the mixed blood (混血, konketsu).

Popularity of the pure-blood eugenics theory came from a homegrown racial purity or monoculture national belief that has been part of Japanese society since ancient times. The local movement was however less focused on modern scientific ideals and more on the "outside person" vs the "native or inside person" and blood purity.

Later legal measures were supported by certain politicians and movements that sought to increase the number of healthy pure Japanese, while simultaneously decreasing the number of people suffering mental retardation, disability, genetic disease and other conditions that led to them being viewed as "inferior" contributions to the Japanese gene pool.

Opposition to the eugenics movement persisted amongst several right-wing factions, including members of the Diet of Japan and obstetricians, who perceived eugenics as suggesting that the Japanese people were only animals, not inhabitants of the "country of the kami" (神国, shinkoku) as believed by the Japanese national Shinto tradition. Yoshiichi Sōwa (曽和義弌), author of "Japan's Shinto Revolution", wrote in 1940, "When we look up into the past, the people of our country are descended from the kami. Are they claiming we must sterilize these people?"

Origins of Japanese domestic scientific eugenics

Yamanouchi Shige (1876–1973), a plant cytologist, was one of the early and important members of the Japanese eugenics movement, who was trained under John Merle Coulter (1851–1928) an American eugenicist and botanist. He was a major promoter and academic of early Lamarckian theory, but later blended his ideas with Mendelian evolutionary theory.

His career is a direct link between United States and Japanese eugenics. His approach has been credited with searching for a way for the Japanese race to genetically surpass what was then the "dominant Western race" of the 19th and early 20th centuries by breeding smarter and stronger Japanese people.

According to Jennifer Robertson of the University of Michigan, eugenism, as part of the new scientific order, was introduced in Japan "under the aegis of nationalism and empire building." She identifies "positive eugenism" and "negative eugenism." Positive eugenism, promoted by Ikeda Shigenori, refers to "the improvement of circumstances of sexual reproduction and thus incorporates advances in sanitation, nutrition and physical education into strategies to shape the reproductive choices and decisions of individual and families" Negative Eugenism, promoted by Hisomu Nagai, "involves the prevention of sexual reproduction, through induced abortion or sterilization among people deemed unfit". "Unfit" included people such as alcoholics, lepers, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, and criminals.

Social Darwinism was at that time gaining credibility with scientists around the world and thus was introduced to Japan as well.

Eugenic policies

Ikeda Shigenori (池田 林儀), a journalist who had been sent to Germany, started the magazine Eugenics movement (優生運動, Yūsei-undō) in 1926. In 1928, he promoted December 21 as "Blood-purity day" (junketsu de) and sponsored free blood tests at the Tokyo Hygiene Laboratory.

Nagai, the "Doctor of Eugenics", assumed the position of chief director of The Japanese Society of Health and Human Ecology (JSHHE), which was established in 1930.

By the early 1930s detailed "eugenic marriage" questionnaires were printed or inserted in popular magazines for public consumption. Promoters like Ikeda were convinced that these marriage surveys would not only insure the eugenic fitness of spouses but also help avoid class differences that could disrupt and even destroy marriage. The goal was to create a database of individuals and their entire households which would enable eugenicists to conduct in-depth surveys of any given family's genealogy.

An Investigation of Global Policy with the Yamato Race as Nucleus, a secret document for the use of policy-makers, cited eugenics approvingly, calling for the medical profession not to concentrate on the sick and weak, and for mental and physical training and selective marriages to improve the population.

National Eugenic Law

After rejection of the originally submitted Race Eugenic Protection Law in 1938, National Eugenic Law (ja:国民優生法, Kokumin Yūsei Hō) was promulgated in 1940 by the Konoe government.

This law limited compulsory sterilization to "inherited mental disease", promoted genetic screening and restricted birth control access. According to Matsubara Yoko, from 1940 to 1945, 454 people were sterilized in Japan under this law.

There were also campaigns to ensure reproduction amongst the "intelligent or superior elements" in the population.

Family center staff also attempted to discourage marriage between Japanese women and Korean men who had been recruited from the peninsula as laborers following its annexation by Japan in 1910. In 1942, a survey report argued that:

the Korean laborers brought to Japan, where they have established permanent residency, are of the lower classes and therefore of inferior constitution... By fathering children with Japanese women, these men could lower the caliber of the Yamato minzoku.

Eugenism was criticized by some Shinto ultranationalists as it seemed to treat Japanese people, considered of divine origin, as animals to be "bred". According to Nagai Hisomu, the Japanese Army's ignorance and dismissal of the science behind eugenics also stalled the spread of eugenic ideology.

Nakano Seigō, leader of the Tōhōkai, despite his political inspiration in Fascism and Nazism, harshly criticized eugenics, supremacism and racial theories and argued against the idea of the superiority of the "Yamato race" by claiming that the Japanese were part of the same Asian race as the Chinese or Koreans. According to Nakano, the divine mission of the Japanese Empire was not to oppress and subjugate other peoples but to liberate them from colonialism and unite them as part of a common Asian civilization.

After 1945

One of the last eugenic measures of the war regime was taken by the Higashikuni government. On 19 August 1945, the Home Ministry ordered local government offices to establish a prostitution service for Allied occupation soldiers to preserve the "purity" of the "Japanese race". The official declaration stated that:

Through the sacrifice of thousands of "Okichis" of the Shōwa era, we shall construct a dike to hold back the mad frenzy of the occupation troops and cultivate and preserve the purity of our race long into the future...

Such clubs were soon established by cabinet councillor Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa.

In post-war Japan, the Eugenic Protection Law (ja:優生保護法, Yūsei Hogo Hō) was enacted in 1948 to replace the National Eugenic Law of 1940. The main provisions allowed for voluntary and involuntary eugenic operations (sterilizations) of people who had hereditary diseases (Article 4), non-hereditary mental illness and intellectual disability (Article 12), as well as where pregnancy would endanger the life of the woman. The operation did not require consent of the woman and her spouse, but the approval of the Prefectural Eugenic Protection Council. In addition to hereditary conditions, some doctors believed forced sterilization on normal mental patients was in the public interest. The operation was "enthusiastically recommended" for normal mental patients at some mental health institutions as recently as the 1970s.

The law also allowed for abortion for pregnancies in the cases of rape, leprosy, hereditarily-transmitted disease, or if the physician determined that the fetus would not be viable outside of the womb. Again, the consent of the woman and her spouse were not necessary. Birth control guidance and implementation was restricted to doctors, nurses and professional midwives accredited by the Prefectural government. The law was also amended in May 1949 to allow abortions for economic reasons at the sole discretion of the doctor, which in effect fully legalized abortion in Japan. After 1950, more than one million abortions each year were performed in Japan.

Forced sterilizations peaked at the end of the 1950s, reaching over 1,000 a year, and declined after that - by the 1980s they were only performed very rarely. In total, about 25,000 people, mostly women or girls as young as nine or ten years old, were forcibly sterilized between 1948 and 1996. Of those, about 16,500 did not consent to the procedure.

Abolition of eugenics laws

Laws that decreed compulsory sterilization of the disabled were abolished with the approval of the Mother's Body Protection Law (母体保護法) on 18 June 1996. In 2019, the National Diet passed a law granting ¥3.2 million in compensation to each person who underwent forced sterilization under the old law. Around 16,500 people were operated on without consent and 8,000 more gave their consent, with at least some likely being under duress.

Some of those impacted by the old law sued the government for higher levels of compensation than offered by the 2019 law. In July 2024, the Supreme Court of Japan ruled that the Eugenic Protection Law passed in 1948 was unconstitutional, and eliminated the 20-year statute of limitations for those affected by the law. Later that month, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida formally apologized to 130 victims of forced sterilization under the Eugenics Protection Law passed in 1948, and approved compensation measures for at least 25,000 affected victims or their relatives.

Leprosy policies

The Leprosy Prevention laws of 1907, 1931 and 1953, the last one only repealed in 1996, permitted the segregation of patients in sanitaria where forced abortions and sterilization were common, even if the laws did not refer to it, and authorized punishment of patients "disturbing peace" as most Japanese leprologists believed that vulnerability to the disease was inheritable.

There were a few Japanese leprologists such as Noburo Ogasawara who argued against the "isolation-sterilization policy" but he was denounced as a traitor to the nation at the 15th Conference of the Japanese Association of Leprology in 1941. Under the colonial Korean Leprosy prevention ordinance, Korean patients were also subjected to hard labor.

In postwar Japan, the Eugenic Protection Law (優生保護法, Yūsei Hogo Hō) was enacted in 1948 to replace the National Eugenic Law of 1940. The indications of the Eugenic Protection Law included leprosy. This condition discontinued when the law changed into the Women's Body Protection Law.

See also

• Racial issues in Japan
• Nazi eugenics
• Japanese nationalism

External links

• The Color of Democracy: A Japanese Public Health Official’s Reconnaissance Trip to the U.S. South Takeuchi-Demirci, Aiko. Southern Spaces 18 March 2011.

References

1. Otsubo S, Bartholomew JR (1998). "Eugenics in Japan: some ironies of modernity, 1883–1945". Sci Context. 11 (3–4): 545–65. doi:10.1017/s0269889700003203. PMID 15168677. S2CID 840243.
2. ^ Robertson, Jennifer (2002). "Blood talks: Eugenic modernity and the creation of new Japanese" (PDF). Hist Anthropol Chur. 13 (3): 191–216. doi:10.1080/0275720022000025547. PMID 19499628. S2CID 41340161. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-12-09. Retrieved 2008-06-22.
3. "The National Eugenic Law" The 107th law that Japanese Government promulgated in 1940　(国民優生法) 第一条　本法ハ悪質ナル遺伝性疾患ノ素質ヲ有スル者ノ増加ヲ防遏スルト共ニ健全ナル素質ヲ有スル者ノ増加ヲ図リ以テ国民素質ノ向上ヲ期スルコトヲ目的トス
4. Rihito Kimura. "Jurisprudence in Genetics". Waseda University. Retrieved 2007-04-18.
5. ^ Kiyoshi Hiroshima (October 1981). "Essay on the history of population policy in modern Japan (2): Population policy on quality and quantity in National Eugenic Law" (PDF). Jinko Mondai Kenkyu (in Japanese) (160): 61–77. PMID 12155095.
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7. Hiroshima 1981, p. 73
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9. Robertson 2002, p. 192
10. ^ Robertson 2002, p. 196
11. 中村 桂子・米本 昌平 「現代社会と遺伝学――第二世代に入る遺伝操作論争」 『世界』 March 1980
12. ^ Robertson 2002, p. 206
13. Japanese Society of Health and Human Ecology - Outline of society Archived 2015-12-02 at the Wayback Machine (Japanese)
14. Robertson 2002, p. 205
15. John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War p270 ISBN 0-394-50030-X
16. "The Eugenic Protection Law" The 107th law that Japanese Government promulgated in 1940　(国民優生法) 第二条　本法ニ於テ優生手術ト称スルハ生殖ヲ不能ナラシムル手術又ハ処置ニシテ命令ヲ以テ定ムルモノヲ謂フ, http://www.res.otemon.ac.jp/~yamamoto/be/BE_law_04.htm Archived 2014-02-05 at the Wayback Machine
17. "Times of change | The Japan Times Online". 12 March 2006.
18. 優生問題を考える（四）──国民優生法と優生保護法 Archived 2006-12-30 at the Wayback Machine Matsubara Yoko - Research of Eugenics problem (Professor of Ritsumeikan University, researcher of Gender-blind and Eugenics.)
19. 牧野千代蔵「断種法反対論」『優生学』第一五年四号［神国日本の歴史的秩序を尊重、断種法のような人為的介入は、人間を動物視するものだ] Makino Chiyozou "Opposite sterilization law" (1935)
20. 民族衛生(1946) Nagai Hisomu "敗因は科学の精神の閑却　民族衛生学の役割は重要　資質優れたものを前線に送りだしのに反して　劣弱なる素質者は，悠々結婚して，子供を産み得る点に於て，由々敷逆淘汰であり…"
21. Saaler, Sven; Szpilman, Christopher W. A. (2011). Pan-Asianism: A Documentary History, Volume 2: 1920–Present. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 51. ISBN 978-0810895393.
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23. Gordon, Postwar Japan as History, pp.306
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25. ^ Sugimoto, An Introduction to Japanese Society, pp.167
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28. "Former Hansen's disease patients shun return to society, survey shows". The Japan Times. May 2001. Archived from the original on 2008-03-19. Retrieved 2007-10-19.
29. Victims of forced sterilisation in Japan to receive compensation and apology The Guardian. 2019.
30. Japan court awards damages to victims of forced sterilisation for first time The Guardian. 2022.
31. "Japan's top court says forced sterilisation unconstitutional". www.bbc.com.
32. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15330707#:~:text=The%20Eugenic%20Protection%20Law%20was,diseases%20could%20be%20forcibly%20sterilized.
33. "Japan PM Kishida apologizes to plaintiffs in forced sterilization lawsuits | NHK WORLD-JAPAN News". NHK WORLD.
34. Michio Miyasaka, A Historical and Ethical Analysis of Leprosy Control Policy in Japan, "Leprosy Control Policy in Japan". Archived from the original on 2011-11-13. Retrieved 2011-11-28.
35. "Michio Miyasaka". Archived from the original on November 13, 2011.
36. Korean Hansens patients seek redress, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20040226a4.html

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